The Silk Road (and OBOR) is alive and well

Recently, I visited a remote part of north western China that was, if not the start of the Silk Road, part of its eastern extremity.
The Silk Road was a network of routes used for the trade of goods between Asia and Europe. And China’s current One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative’s beginnings date all the way back to it.
I went to the far northwest of Xinjiang Province, to a small finger of land that borders Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan. The region contains the Altay mountains, a chain of mountains that stretches several hundred kilometres through China and Russia.
What I found in the vast – and empty – region was power generation of all types and the farming of other resources. But I also found tourists – hordes of them.
Up in the mountains, there were tourists in the thousands, pouring through the mountains, the valleys and the river banks. This area is considered one of China’s natural landscape jewels. It is known to be a photographer’s paradise.
We are increasingly seeing a large number of Chinese tourists venturing abroad. But here was the domestic version of this trend, in huge volume.
Some suggest that China has overinvested in rail and road infrastructure. I don’t think so. Every time I travel to China I am surprised at how these new services and facilities have filled up and are increasingly jammed. Our two-hour traffic jam getting back into Urumqi, a small city by Chinese standards, tells me that most parts of China are far from saturated in terms of transport infrastructure.
So the Silk Road is alive and well. And it is now being given a new lease of economic life under OBOR.

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